Creative Writing:

Mysteries And Thrillers

The Booth Library Creative Writing Group for Young Adults will offer Mysteries and Adventure Thrillers this spring from 6 to 8 pm on five consecutive Monday evenings, April 9 through May 7. The class will not meet on April 16.

Julie Stern, professor, writer, and Newtown resident, will lead the group with assistance from Philip Kotch, one of library’s adult writer volunteers. All sessions will allow time for writing and sharing stories in progress as well as one-on-one communication between adults and young people.

Ms Stern’s love affair with mysteries, she said, began when at the age of 9 her parents would put her on the train in New York to travel to Albany to visit a favorite aunt and uncle. “I would buy a copy of an Ellery Queen mystery magazine at the newspaper stand, and spend the four-hour train ride alternating between staring out the window at the Hudson River and allowing myself to read one more story — I didn’t want to use up the whole magazine before I got there,” said Ms Stern.

She has been an avid reader of mysteries ever since, devouring both short stories and full-length thrillers, and procedurals, and dwelling in literary English country houses with “lots of suspects and tough hard-boiled sagas of city streets on the wrong side of town,” Ms Stern said.

She is currently writing a projected 40-chapter adventure thriller for her oldest granddaughter about two young girls on the lam, being chased by Latin American hit men. “I think it is sort of a cross between Huckleberry Finn and Tin Tin,” said Ms Stern, “except that I wanted it to have girl protagonists.”

Under Ms Stern’s tutelage, student writers enrolled in the mystery writing course will get started either on mystery short stories or even a long adventure, make up situations and characters, good and bad, and work to develop exciting opening sentences.

The free class is limited to ten students in grades 6 through 8. Participants are expected to attend all five sessions, with preference given to Newtown residents. For more information, speak to Margaret Brown, C.H. Booth young adult librarian. Sign up at the Main Floor Desk or call 426-4533.